


silver

by ERNest



Category: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms, Once Upon a Time (TV), Wonderland: A New Alice - Murphy/Boyd/Wildhorn
Genre: Denial, Detachment, Lowercase, Self-Destruction, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steam rises like a Morse-code cry for help. Hatter after the Decree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hatter

_silver’s good enough_  
she makes a pot of tea but this is hardly surprising. the kettle gleams at her and demands to know why it’s here and not there and she wishes, she wishes, she could just let it return to its cousins who can speak. maybe she’ll watch the way it falls and try to stumble after it and trip into the light. she pats it on the lonely head and watches the steam rise like a morse code cry for help. i know honey, i know, she thinks, and she picks it up to cradle it to her chest. she does what she can to take its sadness into herself. i would do anything if we could make it back home, even if it’s a place that never needed us after all. she feels its reproachful gaze and corrects herself. i mean, that never needed me, a place that only had to find a placeholder for itself until something better came along. it needs you, of course; what would the land do without its proud metal receptacles? she puts her best friend on the table and looks curiously at her hand. it probably shouldn’t be that pink. she’s always been the pale one and so this is something unexpected. what do hands look like: she tries to think of something besides clock faces and ticking spinning arms. but that’s not what her body looks like either. she does not look like silver or ceramic or stripes. but why would she look like stripes? she can’t remember what she was thinking about. she stops looking at her shiny palm; she will find no answers in its melted lines. she pours the water over the tea and watches the dampness spread from leaf to leaf. the way it moves, it reminds her of the itching she feels. this is different from the tingling nerves she is used to trying to get rid of. she can feel everything so there are neither pins nor needles. she feels it deeply and the deepness is like burning. she isn’t surprised by this because she couldn’t expect less from a lovely communion with this friend who lets her know that she’s not dead yet. how could she ever leave all this behind, though? she has something that needs her because it can’t get where it belongs without her. she doesn’t know if she can get there at all, but she wouldn’t leave behind the one thing that has supported her all this time. hatter drinks her tea.


	2. Henry

Henry comes to see her every day just to make sure she’s okay, because sometimes she is, but usually she’s not all there. “Aunt Maddy, can I have some peppermint tea today?” There’s no answer, but he hears a soft sound like the coo of a dove or a spoon on a saucer.

He enters the inner sanctum and there’s a pot on the table, but she’s not drinking. She looks in bemusement at something in her hand, but it’s angled away from him so he can’t tell what it is. “Aunt Maddy, what do you have there?” he asks, and she turns to him, startled, like she never saw him until right now.

“Nothing,” she says quietly, “I’ve got nothing,” and her head snaps towards the kettle on the table. “Besides you, of course. Tea is a state of mind.” She reaches out a hand to stroke the metal that is still steaming.

“No,” he says, and runs to grab her wrist, but that’s when he sees that he’s already too late. “Aunt Maddy?” he asks, hoping for one of her patented illogical answers, but he just gets a stare and silence.

“Okay,” he mutters, trying to think, “Let’s go into the kitchen.” She lets him guide her towards the sink, where he just runs cold water over her hands forever. “Is that better,” he asks.

She frowns, puzzled, "Better than what?"

"Oh, never mind!" He needs her to get better, though, because she’s probably the only other one to understand what it’s like here. He steers her to a couch and forces her to sit. “Now stay here,” and he waits for her nod before he heads to the phone.

 _pickuppickuppickup_ he thinks because it just keeps ringing like silverware and he doesn’t want to be alone. And finally he hears the click that means someone is listening on the other end. “Mom?” he says, and he’s so relieved she’s there that he doesn’t care how his voice trembles.


	3. Regina

Regina drops everything and comes over right away. At least it’s not cyanide, she thinks, though that’s small comfort because at least _then_ she knew what she was doing. She’s just sitting there, looking at nothing when she enters the teashop. “Henry, how long has she been like this?”

“She won’t say anything, she just keeps _humming_.”

She kneels down and takes her friend’s hand. “Madeleine,” she says gently and gets no response, not even a twitching finger. “ _Hatter_ , look at me,” she insists. “You need to snap out of it. We all need you here.”

She can feel the anger rolling from her in waves as Hatter pulls her hands out of her grasp. “No! What about _me_ , Regina? I need to not be here. I need to be there for my friends, so I’m taking them back just as soon as I can.”

“Stop it. You know this, there is no back; there is only here for both of us forever.”

“No, no, stop _saying_ that. I know how to get there, I saw the path, but they were all wrong because it’s not straight and narrow at all, it’s crooked stripes and silver branches. You get there by pressing a button and then you dream and then you’re home.”


	4. bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a coda to silver. maybe before the beginning, or maybe it all happens again.

the kettle has a bruise. she doesn’t know where it came from or how it happened, but a quarter turn widdershins from the handle, the metal is tender, wounded. she is careful to wash it in isolation so it does not bump into the walls of the sink or any other dishes, but on the premise that heat will heal most things, she keeps using it to make tea.  
nothing changes, good or bad, but she keeps letting all her tools know how much she cares for them, depends on the work they do. but they’re so much more than tools; they are her very best friends too.


End file.
